NUMEN SYNDROME
by animeparody
Summary: If Mathew was in any other situation, he'd nod at the name. Numen Syndrome; the divine disease. Unfortunately having a very angry pirate and and an equally frightening samurai pointing a sword and gun at him is not exactly a good situation to be in. Just because he's dead doesnt make it any less scary.


_**Day 0: It's obviously the prologue you know?**_

* * *

You probably wouldn't associate spring with death. Season of life and, if you know Japan, cherry blossoms.

Until you realise there's a dead body buried under the tree. There's a saying somewhere, about how beauty hid a deep darkness.

You probably wouldn't associate summer with death either. Especially if you're a student. I mean, no school! What could be a greater joy?

But the pile of meat the crows are pecking at? The one with a small armada of flies? It's a corpse long gone, rotting in the heat, long since unrecognisable.

Now Autumn, you could probably associate with death. The season where the world slowly dies off, turning brown, to herald winter.

You'd probably expect to find the skeleton when you part the sea of fallen leaves, a jutting white amongst a sea of gold and bronze.

You probably wouldn't hesitate to associate the biting, cruelly cold winds of winter with death. I'll just tell you what the body looks like.

Surprisingly, there is blood, which has slowly seeped out of the pale, frozen corpse and formed a nest of frost flowers around it. The snow has not fallen enough to bury the body under white but it is enough to make the background an ethereal scene, where everything is white with barren trees decorating the landscape.

And that's seasonal death for you.

You're probably wondering why I'm doing that. The whole morbid thing. That because I'm going to talk about death, and partially the seasons.

Specifically, Autumn and Spring.

* * *

_Posthumous: Occurring, awarded or appearing after death. _

Matthew Williams knew he was invisible.

Not literally of course.

But he knew that he was ignorable, easy to miss and forget, just another part of the background. He accepted it. He wasn't that okay with it, but hey, he went with the flow.

Sure he got a little angry sometimes. Like when people rammed into him or bypassed his opinion.

But a getting hit by a car? That was pushing it.

Mathew Williams, aged 15, is now dead because apparently not even cars notice him.

It's a pathetic way to go, but hey, silver lining in everything right? No more school, homework or um, starvation?

Okay to hell with the silver lining, he was dead! This was the one way being invisible could get worse, because it was literal! No one would actually notice him this time and-

"Hey!"

_Wait what? _

The girl, with her tan skin and youthful features, looked out of place against the backdrop of flashing blue-red lights.

He was aware that he was staring.

She was kinda pretty, and he was still a teenage boy. But the chances that she was looking at him and not behind him were pretty low.

He'd tested this earlier. Waving at people until they walked through him.

"Um…"

With that simple dress and hoodie of hers she might have been part of the search party, but he had never met her, which should have been impossible in a small town like this.

_Was he standing in front of something really interesting? She was looking worried… _

_He should probably move-_

She poked him in the chest.

"Hey, are you okay?"

Mathew blinked.

"You can see me?"

The girl smiled and clapped her hands together, sighing in relief. This was followed by a babble that he would never have caught if his hobby wasn't listening to other people's conversation.

(_Hey, he had to find something to do.)_

"Oh great you're not one of those amnesiac ghosts. Great. I was pretty worried when you weren't responding- oh yeah you probably thought you couldn't be seen by me but yeah I can see you I'm dead too just not exactly a ghost I'm a bit stronger than that anyway do you need some help? Is that search party looking for you? Because I'm confused because your the newest ghost here but they're looking for a car and you don't look old enough to drive."

Mathew blinked. He caught the conversation but her bubbly-ness was overwhelming his thought processors.

She frowned and reached to poke him again.

"Oh sorry, it's kinda blurry for me right now. Um, no they're not looking for me, they're probably looking for the guy who drove his car off the cliff into the sea. They probably don't know he hit me."

"Why not?! They were around ten witnesses from the beach barbecue thing!"

Mathew batted away the finger poke and sighed.

"That's the thing… I was kinda invisible when I was alive so they probably didn't notice me get hit…"

"Well that's sad."

She nodded, accepting the explanation, folded her arms and contemplated something.

Not only did this girl notice him she had a conversation with him. She was probably an angel or something.

"Ah wait, we haven't properly introduced ourselves! You start first."

"Okay… I'm Mathew Williams, age of death, fifteen. I go to Faywater high."

"Nice to meet you Mathew! I'm Seychelles, but you can call me Elle for short. No you need help passing on?"

_That's a pretty exotic name maybe she came from- wait what was that last question?_

"Um, you can help me pass on?"

Seychelles nodded happily.

"Yeah! Well not really me since you're not a drowned soul and that's my area of expertise but I can directly to the god of untimely death or one of the seasonal death gods- it's, um, Autumn now? Oh wait that would be- oh no I'd better just wait until winter is over or find Gilbert somewhere but that guy is like smoke-"

"Wait, wait. I heard the word god a few times in that sentence."

Mathew blinked as Seychelles nodded, the smile still on her face.

"Yeah we have different gods for different deaths. The requirement for being a god is dying in a way connected to their representation. Like how I died by drowning and became the god of sea deaths! But your death also has to be part of a big event, like a massacre or something."

"So, um, you're a god?"

"Yeah!"

"Okay."

"You seem like a really great guy! Most of the time people don't believe me and I have explain over and over again and do a little um, magic power thingy and then they're all palling and bowing and screaming about hell and stuff like that then they start asking tons of questions I don't know how to answer but you just accepted just like that so-"

"Um, well I'm kinda dead now so might as believe you're a god…"

Mathew had feeling that if he didn't interject she would keep talking until the sun came up.

He clapped his hands together, took a deep breath and decided to start accelerating the car, so to speak.

"Okay! So um, how do I pass on? You said something about another god?"

Seychelles nodded and grabbed his hand.

"I'll explain on the way back to my place, there's a confusing situation right now so it's best you wait till it either blows over or Arthur and Kiku destroy the earth."

"What?!"

All questions were affectively halted when Seychelles started to float.

They were replaced by screams when his feet left the ground and they shot out over the sea.

* * *

authors note: too many plot bunnies at once!


End file.
